From Sawdust to Paw Patrol: The Spin Master Story (with Ronnen Harary)

Ronnen Harary: Thanks, Russ. Thanks for having me.

Ronnen Harary: A lot of people look at the pros and cons of starting something, and you can always game out the downside. It’s really, really easy to game out the downside. It’s very hard to game out the upside because you don’t know what’s going to actually happen. It’s actually beyond all our imaginations what’s possible.

But, if you don’t start, then you miss out on the screenplay of your life. And it’s kind of why I wrote this book, because a lot of people have a lot of pressure from their parents. They have a lot of pressure from society. And, they doubt themselves. So, I wrote the book actually so people can either make the case to themselves to take a risk in something–whatever it is, in business or in arts–or to make the case to not do something, and to create a conversation and to reframe their thoughts around what is possible in their life.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. I think that we focus a lot on the money, and we don’t necessarily focus on what we want to do with our life.

And, I also think about the whole notion of equity. What you trade off when you don’t take the risk to do something for yourself, especially in the realm of starting your own business, is that the time that you’re putting into an endeavor and by working for another company, all the upside is going to accrue to someone else. It’s not going to accrue to you. So essentially, you’re renting your time–right?–versus having that time accrue back to you and looking at your earnings over a long arc.

So, I encourage people to look at your earnings over a 20-year period or a 30-year period. Obviously, if you start a business, your earnings at the beginning are going to be much less than they will be at the end; but divide it back over 30 years, and I bet you your yearly will be higher than the first 10 years if you rent out your time to someone else.

It’s a hard thing. And especially when you’re young, it’s hard to think that far out into the future. But, I think that the other thing about risk–I think a lot about passion, and passion de-levers risk.

So, if you’re really passionate about something and you don’t necessarily have the experience to do it, but you’re super-passionate and you have an idea, I think the passion will de-lever the risk. If you’re just intellectualizing your way into a business or an opportunity, it’s not going to work. But, your passion and the fact that you’re super-young–you have so much energy–so if you match the energy with the passion and the fact that so many people are rooting for you when you’re young and starting a business, like, everybody wants to help you.

Ronnen Harary: Well, yeah, we should have added some pictures. Basically, it’s kind of like a 1990s version of the 1970s Chia Pet. So, it’s in the size of a softball. It’s made out of nylon, sawdust, and grass seed, and it’s got a happy face on it. You put it in water, and it grows grass for hair.

Ronnen Harary: That’s it. But, it’s more than that because it’s so magical because you would never imagine grass growing from this softball, and it does it over the course of seven days, and so it’s quite magical. It’s like a fun houseplant.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. Well, if we back up, the actual idea came from someone in Turkey. No one really knows whoever invented it, and somehow people in Israel found out about it. I found out about it from my mother, who was reading the Yedioth Ahronoth, which is an largest Israeli–the largest Israeli newspaper. And there was a six-page spread about these six different individuals that were manufacturing the product. And in classic Israeli style, they all boasted about how many they were selling.

Basically, I added up all the six, and it came to like 300,000 pieces in a country of 10 million. I was, like, ‘Wow, no one’s doing it over here, so we could sell millions here in North America.’ So, that was my calculus. I didn’t look at it the way you looked at it and said it was ugly. I was just looking at the numbers, actually, and the fact that no one was selling it over here.

So, my late grandmother brought us–me and my sisters–three Earth Buddies for presents. They were called Grassheads in Israel. And, I took them to my business partner, Anton, who we had a small business at university, and I said to him, ‘What do you think about manufacturing and selling these in North America?’ He thought it was crazy.

So, it took me two weeks. He was like you, actually. He was like you. So, it took him two weeks to decide. And then, he’s, like, ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

Then, the next thing we know, we found ourselves in Kmart buying pantyhose and trying to source sawdust and grass seed and trying to figure out what’s the right grass seed. Because we didn’t have the recipe. We had to reverse engineer the product.

Ronnen Harary: Well, first of all, I’m just emotional just listening to you read it back, just the absurdity of it all and the amazingness of it all.

What happens is I pitch him for 30 minutes, no PowerPoint, no nothing, and after 30–and he’s a wonderful man. He sits quiet, doesn’t say anything for 30 minutes. And then he says to me, ‘I’m not the buyer for this product.’

So, what’s running through my head is: He’s not telling me the truth. And so I pitch him again for 15 minutes, and he listens quietly, and then he says, ‘I’m not the buyer for this product.’

So then I’m, like, ‘Okay. I got to make this work somehow.’ So, I said to him–I still didn’t believe him–I said, ‘We’ll give it to you on consigned sales, which means that we’ll give you the product, and if it sells, you pay us.’ So, there’s no risk for him.

He looks at me; he’s, like, ‘I’m not the buyer for this product.’

I’m, like, ‘Okay. I’m giving the product for free, and he’s not taking it, so he’s really not the buyer.’

So, I said to him, ‘Well, who is the buyer? I drove four hours from Toronto. Do you mind letting me know?’ And he was a super-gentleman: went back to his office, and came back, and he gave me the name of the buyer on a piece of paper. It said Adrienne Zacks. I shook his hand and I left, and I started walking around Kmart Corporation looking for this person.

And the craziest thing is the people that got me the meeting, I didn’t even say anything to them. I literally just beelined. I got so excited. I was like, ‘Okay. I got the name.’ So, I beelined looking for this lady.

And, lucky for me, she was sitting at her desk. And I pitched her, and she said, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a meeting at 3:30.’ I went downstairs. I told the guys. They were, like, ‘Let’s go for lunch.’ I said to them, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

So, they left. I was so paranoid back in the day. I was, like, ‘Maybe they won’t let me back in the building. Or maybe she’ll call earlier and I’ll miss the opportunity.’ So, I was, like, ‘I’m just going to stay put.’ So, I just stayed in the lobby, and I went up–

Ronnen Harary: For five hours.

Ronnen Harary: Correct. Correct.

And, I go up at 3:30. And boy, did I know that she was the buyer because as I walked back into her office–I didn’t notice this the first time–but she had seven other Grasshead products, Earth Buddies, on the side of her shelf. So I’m, like, ‘Okay. Now I know I’m in the right place.’

And, I had–did–the calculus in my head. I’m, like, ‘Okay. There’s a lot of competition.’ So, I dropped my price. I was originally going to come in at $2.60 US, and so I dropped a dollar to $1.65 US, and it was costing us about 70 cents US to make it at the time.

I did the pitch for about 15 minutes. And then she did the most magical thing. She turned around, and she gave me this big fat book, which was the vendor agreement with Kmart, which is to become a vendor, a supplier. She said, ‘I’m going to order 48,000 pieces from you. If it goes well, I’m going to order half a million pieces for Christmas.’

And, I was completely shocked. And then I did the strangest thing ever–because I didn’t believe that it was real. I asked her for her garden gnome. She had a gnome–because she was, you know, the buyer of horticulture. It [?], like, ‘Can I have your gnome?’ ‘Yeah.’

And then I left and drove back to Toronto.

Ronnen Harary: Thank you. Yeah–no. What you’re saying proved true because she invited me back four years later to speak to underprivileged youth in Detroit, and so that proved the case that she was super passionate about young people. But, it’s 100% like everybody is rooting for you all the time.

I also think that it’s like when you’re around older people, especially people that are in their middle age, you’re also giving them an opportunity to give back–so, to give back from their wisdom and their insight and to share, and also to feel that youthful energy again. So, I think that people leaning into that is important and to know that you’re actually giving an opportunity to someone to do some goodness in life. It’s like charity, live charity. It’s not even charity, but it’s just live–

Ronnen Harary: I’ll tell you, not only did she change our lives, but she changed other people’s lives.

Ronnen Harary: To produce that quantity, we actually had 200 people in our factory in downtown Toronto working, and two of the people came from a homeless shelter. One, his name was Bob Wakeland[?], and he was running the production. And without him, we would have never been able to produce all that product. There was another gentleman, his name was Grenville[?], and he ran the shipping department. So, it made a really big impact on more than just us. It touched a lot of people.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. Great margin.

Ronnen Harary: Well, novelty products are something you want to experience once or twice, and then once you’ve experienced it, you want to move on to something else. So, it has, like, a peak magic to it, but the magic only lasts for a certain period of time. And, it was just a moment. It was a moment. People had never seen it before.

I also think the velocity sale–we sold so many, everybody got an opportunity to try it, and then they just moved on to something else. But, we were very cognizant of that. We intuitively knew it ourselves, that it was a novelty product, and so we were eagerly looking for: what are we going to follow this up with?

Ronnen Harary: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was a Billy Bass.

Ronnen Harary: Devil Sticks are what I would describe as a three-piece juggling set. You have two sticks you hold, one in each hand, and then you have a big stick that’s weighted on the edge, on the ends. And it’s got nice tassels. And you hit it back and forth. And, because it’s weighted, it starts to spin. As a result of spinning, you can do lots of different tricks with it.

Ronnen Harary: Well, it was a couple things. One is I used to actually play with them in high school myself. I used to go to some Grateful Dead shows, and my buddy made some, and he sold them at some of the Grateful Dead shows. So, in my mind, it was for people that were in their late teens and 1920s, and more for hippies. Bu, what caught my imagination was: Why are 10-year-olds playing with this? Why do they like it? Why are they making them in schoolyards or playing with them in school yards? So, it was just that notion that gave us the feeling that maybe something was in the ether. There was something in the zeitgeist for kids around this.

And we had the factory, and it was: Let’s just give it a try. We have a factory. We can make some prototypes, go to retail, make some packaging. It was just a sense that younger kids were excited about this particular product, and that was the analysis that we made.

Ronnen Harary: No, we don’t sell them today.

Ronnen Harary: You can buy them somewhere. But, again, with the Earth Buddy, it was a moment in time for kids. The same thing like a yo-yo. Yo-yos had, like–back in the day, they were so big. You can still buy them today, but they’re probably a 10th of what they sell when they were really hot and popular. And there’s also just, like, a moment where kids, everybody, all the kids are playing with them and they’re talking about them; and that’s when you tap into the zeitgeist of that particular moment for kids. You get this crazy amplification effect where it’s actually–it was just our product was great. It was good quality. It was a good price. It was nicely designed. But, what really sold it was the moment more than anything else.

Ronnen Harary: We leaned in. We got vans. We hired college students, and they went on tour, and they basically went to universities, and they were flipping the sticks from school to school to school. We filmed our first commercial, and we did some media advertising with it. We were leaning into what’s today is called earned media, but back in the day, it was PR [Public Relations]. So, we were getting on TV. We were getting written up in magazines, newspapers. We didn’t have that much money. I was the model. You can still see my picture on the side of the van today. So, we were marketing it like crazy. We were out on the road.

Ronnen Harary: It was solved. The first two weeks when product actually shipped, it wasn’t solved. It wasn’t 100%, so we had to do some quick modifications. But, yeah, no: we solved it through great engineering and design. The wings would pop off on impact. That’s how we did it. So, you have to put them back on every single time.

Ronnen Harary: Pop off. Yeah. Pops off.

Ronnen Harary: Great. Great pronunciation.

Ronnen Harary: Bakugan, it’s a cross between Transformers and Beyblade. Basically, it’s a round marble that you roll onto a card. In the marble, there’s a magnet and a little spring. When the marble hits the card, it pops open and transforms, and there’s just this magical feedback that you just get, and surprise: And it opens up into this character–and we made hundreds of different types of characters. And then you would roll yours onto the card, and we would battle. Each character had a point number, and then you flip the card open, and then there were sigils [magical symbols–Econlib Ed.] that matched up to–there’s signs that matched up to what was in your Bakugan, and we would start to battle.

So, that was the toy. It was invented by a 23-year-old inventor who had the idea of putting an action figure inside a marble. And so, Ben Dermer, at the time, we’re always looking for ideas from wherever they came from. That was our philosophy in our company. And we licensed the idea, but we only developed it to certain points, and then we actually took it to Japan and partnered with a company by the name of Sega Toys, and they added this genius of the pop-open transformation and the piece of metal that was laminated in a card format. They called it Bakugan.

It was the craziest thing. I went to Japan. I’d been going to Japan for, like, five years, and we hadn’t done very much business there, but they were so good with mechanisms and they’re so creative that I just had a hunch that they would be able to help us with this product.

So, I pitched it to Tomy [a Japanese toy company]. They turned us down. I pitched it to Bandai. They turned us down. Mr. Kokubun, who didn’t speak a stitch of English–no English–he said, ‘Yes.’ And then I came back two months later, and he added this whole incredible innovation to the product.

At which point I said to him, ‘How would you feel about doing a television show?’ Because, the thing in Japan is that they mastered the art form of innovation with animation, with storytelling, and they blended the two together, and they have no problems having both of them live in the same world. So, things like Beyblade or Transformers that came before Bakugan, they all have TV shows attached to the toy. So, I said to him, ‘How would you feel about doing a 52-episode animation?’ And he said to me, ‘Well, let’s do it. It’s going to cost $12 million dollars. Do you have $6?’ I said to him, ‘Let me get back to you.’ So, I went home, spoke to my partners, and eventually came back and said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ And, that’s Bakugan.

But, I do want to state something because you’re going from success to success, and I will say that there’s a lot of failures along the way. The precursor for Bakugan was Beyblade, because five years before that, I’d gone to Japan–and Beyblade, for the listeners, is a spinning top. It’s got a rip cord. It’s also a battling toy, but they’re battling by movement. So, two spinning tops in a tray, and they’re moving around, and they hit each other; and then when the one top gets pushed out of the tray in the arena, then the one that’s still in there is the winner. But back in 2001, five years before Bakugan, I was pitched the idea from Takara Tomy, and I turned it down. And it went on to become a multi-billion-dollar franchise, multi-billion-dollar toy line.

Ronnen Harary: Beyblade, that went to Hasbro.

Ronnen Harary: Well, I was, like, ‘When we get our shots, we’re going to try to create our own Beyblade when the moment arises.’

Ronnen Harary: Correct. You described it really well. The characters on the show, when they popped open, transformed: they grow to a hundred-foot monsters. So many different characters. But you did get very vested in certain characters. Like, Drago was the main character. And there’s a whole bunch of other ones. Yeah, you had your favorite characters that you fantasized about.

You know, I write about it in the prologue of the book: What really dawned on me, I was in South Africa a few years ago on holiday, and I hired a tennis pro, and we hit. It was a great hour. I loved the kid. He was 22 years old. He asked me at the end, he said, ‘What have you been doing? What’s been your journey?’ And, I told him about everything. I told him about Bakugan.

And, he next day he came back, and we hit again, but he brought me his box of 25 Earth Buddies–sorry, 25 Bakugan–in mint condition. Mint condition. And he was so happy to show me everything. And he was 22, and he still had them from when he was eight years old. And it was the craziest thing for me, because what dawned on me in that time–and it had never dawned on me ever before–was that we created Bakugan, but this kid lived it. So, that fantasy that you just described before was a lived experience for him for three or four years of his life. And it was totally different than my relationship to it. And so it was quite a moment for me.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. Very much so. Very much so.

Ronnen Harary: I have a whole collection in my office.

Ronnen Harary: I don’t know. Maybe 20, 30. I have the original ones.

Ronnen Harary: What do you mean, altogether? That have been produced in the world?

Ronnen Harary: In the world? Probably, like, I don’t know, maybe a billion Bakugan.

Ronnen Harary: They have different characters.

Ronnen Harary: I have different characters from different years, and I have prototypes. I have a whole mishmash, probably.

Ronnen Harary: In our archive, we have the complete set. In my office, I have a mishmash.

Ronnen Harary: PAW Patrol is a wonderful TV show about five dogs that each have their own archetype that are led by their leader, Ryder, who is a 12-year-old kid who has got his own ATV [All-Terrain Vehicle]. They all live in Adventure Bay. Whenever there’s a calamity in Adventure Bay, Ryder picks certain pups to solve the calamity. So, you have Marshall [?Chase?], who is the police dog, and he’s kind of like Batman in a puppy. Then you have Marshall–he’s the fire dog, the fire puppy. Skye, and she’s got her own incredible helicopter and jet. Zuma is an amazing puppy that goes underwater. You got Rocky, who is a recycling pup. And, whenever there’s calamity in Adventure Bay, they go out and they solve issues. I call them mitzvah pups. They’re basically doing good in the world, solving problems, and doing it with collaborating in a really wonderful way.

Ronnen Harary: No: it’s high-paced and exciting for preschoolers. Because, basically what happens is they go up the tower–whenever there’s calamity, they get called into the tower. They’re out playing, and then Ryder calls them, and they run into the elevator of the tower. Marshall always does something funny in every episode. Then they go up the tower. As they go up the tower, they transform into their backpacks. So, each puppy has a special backpack that does amazing magical things. Then they all stand in formation; and then on a screen, Ryder’s describing the mission. Then they pick certain pups, and they go down this incredible slide, and they pop out and jump into their doghouse that transforms into a vehicle, and then they go off into the adventure. So, it’s imbued with transformation. It’s imbued with excitement and speed and action, and then collaboration. And a solve.

Ronnen Harary: And, a solve at the end.

Ronnen Harary: There’s stakes in every episode.

Ronnen Harary: It was the most incredible team. So, the original concept was developed by a gentleman by the name of Keith Chapman, and he’s an incredible storyteller from the United Kingdom. He’s the creator of Bob the Builder, and I had known him for–yeah. You know, the English are the best storytellers in the world. When it comes to kids’ animation, they’re amazing. I’d wanted to work with them for, like, 10-plus years–for a long time. So, we had sent out a brief to five different creators around the world, asking them to come to us with some sort of idea that would match up with transformation for preschoolers. So, Keith came back with this whole idea with the archetype that I just explained to you.

So, we took that idea, and then we found writers, and they wrote based on his idea. We found an incredible animation studio, and we started developing the characters and the look and the feel. We took toy designers–his was kind of from our experience from Bakugan, but no one had done it in North America–we took toy designers, which is a very specific art in terms of the look and feel and also the play pattern, and we mashed[?matched?] them up with the animators and the storytellers. We had them all sitting in the same room, sharing ideas, drawing over each other’s art.

Like, I’ll never forget, Eric Cherney, who is a Hot Wheels designer–he was drawing over the animators’ designs–vehicle designs. And then they would draw over his, and they would go back and forth. There was creative friction there. But, what we kind of intuitively knew from being in the toy business–PAW Patrol hit in our 19th year, so we’d been doing toys for 19 years, and so we took all our knowledge about what’s aspirational for kids, and we put it into the story. And then we started working with incredible storytellers who knew how to make characters resonate with you and made–why would you care for the characters–and we mashed it all up together.

Then there was an incredible director, Jamie Whitney. He was 52 or 53 at the time. He had produced the most incredible children’s television shows, probably like five that are like world class, Emmy Award winning. And he was just the nicest guy. You see his niceness is in the way the characters are brought to life. And the writers are so nice. It was probably one of the most amazing projects of people that just came to do their craft as best that they can do their craft. And no one did it: no one was dialing it in. No one thought that PAW Patrol would be what it has become today and how big it has become. It was more about just making it right in the moment.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. So, we’re in our 13th year of PAW Patrol. Every year we do 52 episodes. We do specials every year. We’re now coming up with our third movie. It’s coming out August 14th this year. For us, everything was about–we started out and we said, ‘Let’s try to get to five years of PAW Patrol.’ We said, ‘Paw for five.’ Then we said, ‘Paw for 10.’ And then, we said, ‘Paw forever.’

So, we’re always bringing new stories and excitement to the show–that comes to the kids–and then creating new toy lines around it; but we’re very focused on just keeping everything fresh and new, but with the same tone and tenor of what the show is all about and never changing the tone and tenor, which is super, super important.

Ronnen Harary: It’s funny that you say–you never want to jump the shark. And, it’s funny that you brought up Martians. Some people think, ‘Oh, it’d be cool to go to space.’ PAW Patrol will never go to space, because that’s just too far afield. You have to stay very true to what made the show the show, and you have to really stay within the confines of what that is. From a sales perspective, you just need to stay within the confines and make sure that the writers, the new writers that are coming along, are writing within the tradition of the writers that came before them. The pacing stays the same. The comedy stays the same. It’s all about the tone and tenor. But, within that, you can have fun and you can play.

So, for example, our movie that’s coming out this year, the pups are actually going to a special island where there’s dinosaurs, and they have their own unique vehicles, and their headquarters is a special mobile–something I can’t share exactly what it is yet, but you’ll see it in the movie. But, the same repetition.

So, for example, the way a show is actually built never changed. Never changes. So, it’s almost like the way you write a song. The song, the melody hasn’t changed; but you can jam around it, but the melody is the same. So, the first act, second act, the third act, it’s very structured, and so we never changed the structure. The voicees never changed. The kids actually–it’s interesting–the kids, all the voices are done by children and they age out at like 14 when they hit puberty. So, there’s been a lot of Marshalls and Chases and Skyes and Zumas and stuff like this, but they always hit that perfect pitch of their voice every single time.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. There’s a new generation of kids. I think that the brilliance of Keith Chapman was the puppies and making them with incredible capabilities: that anything’s possible and you can resolve everything and you can do it in a nice way. And I think those are meaningful. The nice thing I think for this generation is: they get the benefit of having 13 seasons, so that they got a long arc to choose from. It’s fresh. It’s fresh. It’s a new generation of kids.

Ronnen Harary: There you go.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. It’s similar to what you said before about the doctor. Was he a doctor?

Ronnen Harary: It’s a hard thing to actually understand the scope and scale.

Ronnen Harary: It’s really hard to understand the scope and scale–and savor it, like you mentioned. I’m very blessed to get lots of opportunities where I meet people and they’ve got kids and they hear about PAW Patrol and then they want to share the stories, and everybody gets excited. Sometimes they want to take my picture, which is kind of cool.

But, I think the most magical things is actually when I see kids. I love walking in airports. I have this thing about airports. I learn so much in the airport. When I see a kid holding a PAW Patrol plush or I see them watching it on an iPad or something like that, that’s when it really hits me. That’s when it really hits me that it’s that far reaching at the end of the day.

Ronnen Harary: Well, a good meeting is when you are able to bring out the ideas from the other people sitting around the table, and you’re able to bring up everybody’s energy level, and it’s an exchange. It’s kind of like a symphony or a jam band, and everybody starts jamming together and you’re creating music. Versus creating music, we’re generating ideas. And then, through the ideas, you get the best one pops out, and the idea is seen by everybody in the room, and everybody gets energy from the idea. And then they leave the meeting and they’re all energized to go in action what just transpired. And, you do that over and over and over and again.

I think that maybe a lot of it comes maybe from my learning disability because I can’t do the PowerPoints. I don’t write everything out. So, it’s more about a synthesis of people coming together. And I used to do the strangest things in the early days when I used to basically page people on the intercom.

So, when I start a meeting, I’ll start with two or three people. And then when I get an idea and I want to–and I know that there’s someone else that can actually contribute to this idea or to this thought, I want them to come into the room at that moment in time. So, I won’t wait to book another meeting. In the olden days, I would page them–literally page them on the intercom–and have them come to my meeting. Then my business partner, Anton, he cut me off because he thought I was disrupting everybody. Which I was.

Then later on, literally, I would scream to my assistant sitting outside my office, and I’d ask her to go find the person, and the person would come in. I would do this, and sometimes I’d start with two people and we’d end up with like eight or nine people in the meeting. And we’re just jamming on the ideas.

So, it’s, like, when the inspiration comes, I want to take advantage of it. Because I’m trying to connect the dots, like: Who can add to this topic at this moment in time? Right? And I’m very much into the diversity of thought. I think that’s the most important thing, is diversity of thought. At Spin Master, you can start in shipping–and it’s famous–you’ll end up being a senior vice president at our company: because we don’t care about anything other than what your thoughts are and what you can bring to the table. And we like mixing it up.

And, yeah. So, that’s what I do. And I think about myself as like a conductor, and I’m just trying to mash up people’s thoughts to get the best idea out. And the one thing I like to say is I love bringing the introverts into the room, because I find that they usually have incredible things to contribute, but they’re not naturally built that way to speak up because they’re more introverted. So, I like to just draw it out; and then it’s, like, ‘Wow, that’s an incredible insight.’ Just looking for the insights. Just looking for the insights.

The other thing I will say is that–and this goes against all contemporary norms–is I will not end a meeting on time if the meeting is really good. I won’t end it.

Ronnen Harary: I try to save it.

I think they’re always good. There’s always good things that come out. I will tell you, I have a thing with my team. I have standing meetings every single week. And, so many times the team calls and says, ‘Oh, Ronnen, there’s nothing to discuss this week. Why don’t we cancel it?’ And, I never cancel a meeting. Ever. I’ve never canceled a meeting in my whole career–okay? Because the best things come out of those meetings. There’s always things to talk about. It’s the meetings that you actually have less to talk about, with less pressure, that the good ideas start to come out.

Ronnen Harary: First of all, I’m so happy you’re bringing this up. I’m not exactly sure, but for some reason, business has got lots of negative connotations built in. It doesn’t have the best reputation. And sometimes people do things that are untoward in the business world, and as a result–and it’s also tied to money, and there’s lots of connotations around money that gets conjured up for people. Also, how people work with people and how they treat people, there’s negative thoughts around that. So, there’s all those elements, plus many more, that create that narrative for people.

But, the one thing that dawned on me is, and I didn’t realize it so much later on, is that if you bring things out into the world that have never been created before–and that could be a service or that could be a restaurant or a new recipe or the way you’re serving food or a new type of gym–they’re all experiences, experiences or products or a new way to do a podcast or a different type of financial service. They’re all creative things that are new and different, and you’re birthing them and you’re bringing them out into the world. So, what’s the difference between that and painting a picture? Right? Or writing a song? They’re all creative endeavors. The only differenc is, in business is, it’s more, instead of using paints, it’s human beings coming together in a coordinated fashion to create something that’s never been done before. And I think that’s something extremely artistic.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. No, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. Also, what people bring into the world and how it helps people. Actually, there’s so many small-to-medium-sized businesses that really drive and power the economy, and that’s people’s lives. That’s people’s lives and how they live and how they interact.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah. Myself and my partner, Anton, we stepped down from being co-CEOs about five years ago.

Ronnen Harary: Actually, I get more excited about the toys still than the business as a whole. The toys themselves, that never goes away. I’m stuck at seven forever. So, it’s like–when you see the magic–I tell you what I get the most excited about. I get the most excited about when I see a toy getting created in the company that’s super magical, innovative, that I had nothing to do with personally.

Ronnen Harary: It happened in 2016. We brought this product out called Hatchimals. This is a great product. You would like this one, Russ. It’s a character in an egg. And when you hold the egg, it picks up on the heat of your hands and it activates the–it’s like a bird inside. It activates the bird, and it starts pecking to come out of the egg, and he turns 360 degrees in the egg and he pecks. And if you put the egg down, he’ll stop. If you don’t pick it up for three months, he’s just lying dormant. You pick it up again, he’ll wake up and he’ll start pecking. Eventually, he will crack his way out of the egg, and you pull him out and then you interact with him and he comes to life.

That product went on to become really successful for our company, and I had nothing to do with it. I was co-CEO of the company back in the day, and I was still involved in product. I had nothing to do with that product. Zero. And to me, that’s one of the greatest achievements. The greatest achievement is when the culture we’ve built in the company is being replicated by other people in the company, and that’s the highest form of success. If the company, God willing, could live beyond the founders, that’s the highest form of success and continue to do what we’re doing and tell great stories and great products. But, I like to see them. That’s like a proud grandparent. You what I mean?

Ronnen Harary: I like to see what gets created.

Ronnen Harary: Yeah, it’s Duncan yo-yos. That’s right.

Ronnen Harary: Listen, I had the Spider-Man stringer you put on your wrist and then out came the web. I loved playing with that.

I actually had Green Army Man, believe it or not. So, that was cool, just placing them and just letting my imagination run wild.

So, I had a few. I didn’t actually grow up with a lot of toys, which is quite ironic. We just did not have them in the house very much. But, I did grow up in that time where it was just like your imagination could just run wild, and I think that’s the most beautiful thing about toys–actually, of any generation.

And the funniest thing is when you were talking about the pulling the string on the Bugs Bunny, like, the same mechanics are still around. You still buy plush toys today, right? People still buy plush toys. We make plush toys. The play patterns are actually eternal. They’re just the technologies just change.

Ronnen Harary: Thanks, Russ. Appreciate it.